Except that the kids playing with the Luke doll are reenacting the Crait “duel” between Luke and Ben.

I can’t recall the dialogue during this scene. Do they reference it specifically? Even if so, it might be interesting to see this beforehand as a foreshadowing of how Luke literally steps into the form of his own legend.

JEDIT: And honestly, it seems like the story of how Luke took down a walker single-handedly would be a more widely-known legend, considering it was witnessed by the Rebellion that would have gone on to rule the galaxy and that it would have had decades to spread and grow.

One thing I was wondering after seeing the film is whether or not Luke’s line “if you strike me down in anger, I will always be with you. Just like your father.” was meant to imply that Ben is literally being haunted by the voice/image/presence of Han. Only because that line was so much like Kenobi’s line which resulted in him literally becoming a ghost.

Further thoughts on changing The Force Awakens to serve TLJ, I could place some of the footage of the Raddus going to hyperspace into the destruction of the Hosnian system.
It might be going too far to show Holdo staring out of the window at the approaching lasers, but even placing the TLJ ships in the distance going to hyperspace in this shot would help.

If we see Holdo in this sequence, then the only dialogue necessary for the previous scene would be ‘General, the Republic is scrambling the fleet to assist us’.

The galaxy stands at the brink.
With the Republic destroyed,
General Leia Organa has fled
into uncharted space with the
last of their once-mighty fleet,
awaiting the return of the
legendary Luke Skywalker.

Feverish from his wounds,
former Stormtrooper Finn
tries in vain to warn Leia
of a hidden peril, claiming
that Snoke’s mighty warship
contains a device which can
track them past the furthest
star.

Disobeying the orders of
his superior, Commander
Poe Dameron has sent Finn
with a medic to Canto Bight,
where a mysterious gambler
may have knowledge of this
insidious device…

Your alternate crawl sounds good, but I always find it hard to tell without seeing it in motion. Though I’m not sure about “awaiting the return of the legendary Luke Skywalker”, I’d go with something on reigniting the rebellion here instead. Also, I’d say farthest rather than furthest in paragraph two.

Your idea for Holdo in TFA is interesting. If you could make it work, I think a close up of Holdo (something like with Korr Sella on the planet) would be great.

One thing I’m curious about with this restructure that moves the Leia/Resistance stuff to later is the scene where Snoke gets mad at Ren for losing to Rey. I think that needs to be the first scene of the restructure because it is a direct follow up to the scene in TFA where Snoke told Hux to bring him Kylo Ren so he can finish his training.

That scene would also be a good place to start. The reason I like the Casino planet first, however, is that it would allow a great deal of specificity about Finn and Rose which would be necessary to understanding what’s going on.

On another note, something that bugs me:

“And this is the lesson. That Force does not belong to the Jedi.
To say that if the Jedi die the light dies is vanity, can you feel that?
There’s something else…”

I’d remove the sentence about vanity, since his meaning is clear with his first two sentences. This scene is one of my favorites in the movie, and this line is one of many in the movie that overexplain and end up being a detriment to the tone.

Yeah, that’s definitely how it reads. But it’s just so monotone, always a poor teacher. It would be nice to have one moment of good instruction without him butting in, just to give a bit of contrast to the part.

I was skimming through the Last Jedi spoiler discussion thread and I stumbled across your speculation regarding a correlation between Holdo’s hyperspace kamikaze and the hyperspace tracking device in the Supremecy. I’ll post those thoughts here for context.

The way I understand hyperspace working is that it’s a dimension weakly coupled to normal space, so that ships traveling through hyperspace would still need to ‘avoid’ masses but a crash would primarily affect the object in hyperspace. Under this theory, any ship going to Hyperspace would damage that ship far more than the target.

But what if the hyperspace tracking technology used by the Supremacy means that the ship is always partially in Hyperspace? After all, some part of the ship would need to interact with this dimension at all times for it to work. Under this theory, the First Order is undone by its own technology and hubris rather than an overpowered exploit of the ill-defined rules of the universe.

The idea is that the Supremacy’s hyperspace tracking device acts as a static hyperdrive itself when active. It’s static in that the Supremacy enters hyperspace with this device but doesn’t move, allowing it to use its sensors to find other ships in hyperspace.

I’m thinking of it like a periscope on a submarine - part of the sub must leave the water for it to work. To continue the analogy - if a speedboat were to hit the periscope, it would damage the sub, whereas if there were no periscope the boat would pass overhead with little disturbance.

I really love this hypothesis. While I don’t really have a problem with the questions it has raised with the fan base myself, I think this explanation could really alleviate those questions nicely. It’d be interesting if this could be the implied explanation in a fan edit, but I do think it still requires some assumptions though. Was Holdo aware of the hyperspace tracker on the Supremecy by that point, and if she was, how did she know how it works and that ramming it in hyperspace would actually have that effect?

While you could handwave it and say she learned about it off screen, it’d be nice if it was at least implied in the film through editing that she knew. You could also imply some connection to Holdo’s hyperspace jump and the tracking device by cutting back to the device right before she jumps, or have it quickly explode in a white burst of light when she does jump. Not sure how it could work, just spitballing. Though I do think those two things, Holdo’s awareness of the device and a stronger correlation between the hyperspace jump and the hyperspace device, are important.

The more I think about the Last Jedi, the less I feel needs to be changed, but I think this might be interesting just to try and play with. Any thoughts on this?

It’s definitely something I’m thinking about, but for it to make sense there would need to be some onscreen explanation of how it works, preferably during the holographic Supremacy scene.

Of course, this is at cross-purposes with the idea of cutting the opening scenes entirely, since it would do away with the holographic Supremacy.

There’s a lot of ways to take this edit, so all options are sill on the table. I like your idea of connecting the hyperspace tracker and the Raddus right before the impact.

JEDIT: The Hyperspace crash sequence could be edited to more accurately reflect the idea that the Raddus is hitting just the tracker and not the entire Supremacy. In the first shot, we see the Raddus fly towards the Supremacy then disappear into Hyperspace. Then in the next shot there is a bright line intersecting the Supremacy, slicing it in half.
Perhaps removing the bright line of the Raddus before impact would indicate that it was definitely in Hyperspace at the point of impact. Then, instead of it slicing through the entire ship, the slice started midway through the wing. It looks like the debris from the explosion radiate out from a midpoint anyway.

I actually like that idea, but there are still some logical hoops you might need to jump through. Not only might you need to establish Holdo knowing about the device, but also where on the Supremecy the device was located, otherwise it seems like a very big coincidence.

I kind of think it would be simpler to infer that the entire ship has some kind of “hyper-field mumbo jumbo” charge generated as a result by the device. But maybe the hologram would imply they have some kind of schematics of the Supremecy?

I remember Leia flies through a Supremacy hologram projected on the bridge during her Force floating scene, so it can be implied that they know about the device by this point. I could make it more explicit if I were to use a crawl where Finn tries to warn the Resistance about such a device. He says at one point that he knows where the device is located, so that’s not too much of a logical leap.

The more I think about this movie the more I’d like to see a substantial paring down and reorganization of the scenes. The movie really works on a visual and emotional level, but a lot of the quips, jokes, and complicated exposition really detract from a simple story that is essentially about failure and remorse.

The movie also loses a lot of its emotional heft in strange editing. For example Luke’s death is handled very oddly.

In its current order:
Salt Flat: Luke tricks Kylo Ren. Ren Screams in anger.
Island: Luke collapses, then struggles to get up.
Hills: Rey looks back, and Leia looks troubled.
Island: Luke gets up.
Hills: Rey continues looking.
Island: Luke dies. Music becomes mournful.
Crait Base: First Order marches in, Kylo finds the dice, and looks up suddenly.
Crosscut between Rey and Kylo, then she shuts the door on him.
Crait Base: Dice disappear and pan out on Kylo.
Falcon flies away from Crait, with musical sting.
Falcon: Everyone has a happy reunion, then they sadly talk about Luke.

There are two issues with this. First, the dice don’t disappear when Luke dies. More importantly, the music of Luke’s death is interrupted by a short First Order theme which tramples on the moment.

I’d consider reordering it to play like this:

Salt Flat: Luke tricks Kylo Ren. Ren Screams in anger.
Island: Luke collapses, then struggles to get up.
Crait Base: First Order marches in, Kylo finds the dice.
Hills: Rey looks back, and Leia looks troubled.
Island: Luke gets up.
Hills: Rey continues looking.
Island: Luke dies. Music becomes mournful.
Crait Base: Kylo looks at dice as they disappear. He suddenly looks up.
Crosscut between Rey and Kylo, then she shuts the door on him.
Crait Base: Pan away from Kylo.
Falcon flies away from Crait. No music.
Falcon: Cut happy reunions. Start with the shot of Finn getting the blanket out of the Jedi book drawer, and leave the reunion for the final group shot.

JEDIT:

Actually, I would change the final ending of the movie further if it works to put the Luke Skywalker kid’s story right before the Canto Bight prison break.

The Falcon flies into camera, cutting the entrance to Hyperspace.
The Falcon scene happens without reunions as stated, ending with the group shot and no exterior in Hyperspace.
End of the Broom Boy scene with the ship streaking across the sky.
Cut to credits.

Here’s a weird idea for a restructuring. I’d cut the escape from the base as usual, but then describe a much different battle in the crawl:

The galaxy’s hope is dying.
In a battle against the First
Order’s fleet, the Republic
armada has been shattered.

Unable to prevail against
the flagship of Supreme
Leader Snoke and his dark
apprentice, Commander
Poe Dameron falls back
amid heavy losses, with
Leia Organa herself
among the wounded.

As the remnants of the
Republic fleet flee into
hyperspace, Kylo Ren,
heir to the Imperial
throne, returns from
the battlefield at the
summons of his evil
master…

This implies that a whole lot more has been going on between movies. The Resistance has managed to scramble ships from all corners of the galaxy in a single attack to destroy First Order. The first scene would be a pan down to Snoke’s ship and the scene of Ren being chewed out for being conflicted. Cut to Finn waking up and meeting Poe, then the transition to Rey. She walks to the place on the cliff where Luke was in her vision (if that works in my TFA edit), but he isn’t there. She goes looking for him, and finds him in one of the huts. After the Rey scenes,
the fleet exits hyperspace, have the scene of Holdo taking command and her shutting down Poe’s questions (sans the statements about being followed), the deleted scene of Finn and the Rey hologram, then Finn in the escape pods. It is here that we learn that the First Order can track them through hyperspace. Then Rose, Finn, and Poe formulate a plan to deactivate the tracker and leave for Canto Bight. Right after they leave, the First Order arrives, and Hux bemoans that they can’t destroy them yet. At some point (maybe during Rey’s Forcetime with Kylo) have Kylo flashback to his unwillingness to kill Leia, which is the specific weakness he refers to in the first scene.

What this restructure does is remove the opening battle and all of Leia’s scenes before she is unconscious, cutting down on the runtime significantly, while also putting the issue of Leia between Poe and Holdo from the outset. Poe’s brazen attack from the crawl has led to this tragedy, and and since we don’t see him take out a dreadnought there is no question that he failed to save the fleet. Holdo has more reason to be antagonistic to Poe for this reason, since we know by the end that she cared for Leia a great deal.

By making it so that Finn knows from the outset about the hyperspace tracking, his unconsciousness at the beginning serves a story purpose.

By moving the First Order’s arrival to after Finn leaves for Canto Bight, it removes the issue of why the Resistance didn’t just use this ship to help ferry people off the Raddus during the pursuit.

By removing so much from the pursuit plot, it puts more focus on Finn and Rey’s stories, and less on the part of the plot that makes the least amount of sense.

And finally, this restructure would keep the convention of the OT where we start with an establishing shot of a Star Destroyer.